The invention relates to a core intended to be used as a support for a roll of paper, especially toilet paper.
In the field of paper intended for domestic use, especially toilet paper or kitchen towel, it is known to present them in the form of rolls. Said rolls are formed by winding the paper around a core that is generally made of cardboard.
The choice of cardboard results in fact from the compromise sought by the manufacturers between the ability of the material to cope with the mechanical stresses during manufacture and the desire to limit the cost of the product in the end. Indeed, it turns out that these cores, during the manufacture of the rolls, are subjected to diverse mechanical stresses whether this is during their time in the winding machine, during the packaging of the rolls into packets or during stacking of the packets of rolls on pallets intended to transport them. The material that forms these cores must in particular have good stiffness characteristics to withstand the loads and stresses to which the rolls are subjected throughout their production and distribution cycle. A material that does not have sufficient strength would indeed cause a deformation of individual rolls or else a collapse of the stacks of rolls on the pallets. This would therefore have particularly detrimental consequences for the quality of the products obtained or for the overall production yield of these rolls.
Until now, cardboard has formed a quite suitable solution to these requirements. It has, in addition, the advantage of being relatively inexpensive.
However, this type of cardboard core now proves unsuitable to the new requirements of consumers to have an easily disposable material, especially one which can be thrown away down toilet bowls.
Indeed, the consumer has for a long time been used to throwing away sections of toilet paper, after use, in the toilet bowl and of then flushing to dispose of them into the soil pipe. This generally does not result in any obstruction of said pipe, given that the material made of tissue paper forming these sections disintegrates easily and rapidly in the presence of water.
The same operation can no longer be applied, however, when it is a question of disposing of the cardboard core, once the whole supply of paper has been used. This is because cardboard, being a material that is a lot less absorbent than tissue paper, disintegrates very slowly, and with great difficulty, in water. It results in an almost definite blockage of the soil pipe of toilets, when the toilet is flushed just after said core has been thrown into the bowl.
The only alternative is therefore to favour a disposal of the core in an outside dustbin. This solution however has the major drawback of needlessly increasing the amount of waste produced by all the consumers. For want of being separated from other household waste, these cardboard cores are often not recycled or recyclable. This therefore results in a significant increase in the volume of waste to be destroyed or to be stored at dumps, which goes against the current ecological concerns of our modern societies.
The present invention therefore aims to solve the problems raised by this prior art and, in particular, to provide a core which may easily disintegrate in toilets.